Jacopo Bellini, St Michael
Defeating Satan, a
drawing

Italy, about AD 1455-65

Although few paintings by Jacopo Bellini (about
1400-70/1) survive, both The British Museum and the Musée du Louvre
in Paris own a bound volume of his compositional drawings. The
London volume contains one hundred and thirty four drawings, nearly
all drawn in
leadpoint
on heavy white paper. As a medium leadpoint is very soft, therefore
the line is very
faint.

According to
Revelation, the last book of the Bible, war broke out in heaven and
St Michael and his angels defeated the dragon or Satan and the
forces of evil. In this two page drawing, St Michael flies across
the rocky and fiery landscape of Hell to attack Satan. The Devil
cowers at lower right, long horns on his head and bat's
wings on his back. The archangel's sword has split open the
rocks, allowing a figure to crawl out and another to witness the
angelic battle. The main scene takes place on the recto (front) of
the sheet and continues onto the verso (back) of the previous
sheet.

Jacopo was the
founder of a family of artists. He worked with both his half
brother, Giovanni, and his nephew, Leonardo, while his own sons,
Gentile and Giovanni (around 1438-1516), both became major Venetian
artists. Both sons, in turn, inherited their father's book
of drawings, now in The British Museum. Jacopo's son-in-law
was Andrea Mantegna (1430-1506), an artist from Padua who worked at
the court of the Gonzaga family in Mantua.

A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, Italian drawings in the Depa-5 (London, The British Museum Press, 1950)

C. Eisler, The genius of Jacopo Bellini: (London, The British Museum Press, 1989)

F. Ames-Lewis, Drawing in early Renaissance I (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1981)